honoring my elders, part male
I have had few role models for healthy relationships with older males, as most of the ones I knew when I was growing up didn’t have much use for girls generally, and me specifically. I do like and appreciate the way(s) men think, and I have had many friendships with men, even older ones, but I had to break new ground with each one.
Today I realized that my uneasy relationship with one particular older man has been a gift to me because it’s so uncomfortable. If we had hit it off at the beginning, I wouldn’t have looked at his life and tried to figure out how he became who he is. I wouldn’t have read books about environments similar to the one he grew up in, and tried to imagine him in the place of various characters. I wouldn’t have explored so much in my own mind what family can be, or should be; what we can hope for from relationships we didn’t choose.
